Edmund Connelly: Now I’ve got more reason to like Steve Sailer. He recently showed again on his VDARE blog why I’ve recommended him so strongly. Recall my two columns last year recommending his work—see here and here. I really think he does a great job at quantitatively showing how Jews have become the new elite in our society. And he does a pretty good job at pointing to some Jewish behavior that the MSM doesn’t always want to acknowledge.
His blog here paints a pretty clear picture again. His column is a coment David Brooks NYTimes column extolling the virtues of the new meritocracy compared to the bad old days when the WASPs ran the country. Brooks claims that “we have opened up opportunities for women, African-Americans, Jews, Italians, Poles, Hispanics and members of many other groups.”
In reality, however, the big winners from this “meritocracy” are Jews. Sailer points out that
In 2009, 35% of the Forbes 400 are from one ethnic group that makes up only 2% of the population. So, is “The Power Elite” really that much more diverse today?
If you break down Brooks’ list — “African-Americans, Jews, Italians, Poles, Hispanics”– by membership in the 2009 Forbes 400, you come up with:
African-Americans: 1 (Oprah) Jews: 141 Italians: 14 Poles (and all other Eastern Europeans): 6 Hispanics: 2
Similarly, if you look at the 2009 Atlantic 50 ranking of most influential pundits, it’s half Jewish, versus 2% black and 0.5% Hispanic.
In other words, this increased “meritocratic diversity” among the elites that Brooks is writing about essentially consists of the rise of Jews over the last century.
The fact is that the new order is reasonably seen as less of a meritocracy than a new form of clubbiness where ethnic ties among Jews ease the way into top positions. Ethnic cohesion is certainly the main story of the Jewish academic and intellectual elite that constructed the Culture of Critique in the academic world, and the vast overrepresentation of Jews in the media elite mentioned by Sailer suggests it’s the same story there. Indeed, Jews are vastly overrepresented as students in elite academic institutions even controlling for IQ.
This new elite based on ethnic networking is at least as corrupt as the old WASP elite and its family ties. The new elite reacts with angry aggression and charges of “anti-Semitism” if one even mentions that they are in fact an elite.
The old elite had a sense of civic responsibility and national interest. As Sailer notes, the new elite seems to care nothing about the long term success of the society as a whole:
The unspoken implication of Brooks’ analyses is that American Jews should start thinking of themselves less as oppressed outcasts who need to go for whatever they can get while the getting is good, and start thinking of themselves more realistically as the core of the New American Establishment. Thus, American Jews should realize that, like the Protestant Establishment of yore, their privileged position as a de facto leadership caste bestows upon them corresponding duties to conserve the long-term well-being of the overall nation rather than to indulge in personal and ethnic profit and power maximization.
But the terrifying reality is that the Jewish ascendancy remains hostile to the traditional people and culture of America. Jews continue to earn like Episcopalians (actually more than Episcopalians) and vote like Puerto Ricans. They are the financial backbone of the Democratic Party and its coalition of non-White ethnic groups. (83% voted for Obama.) The organized Jewish community is a major pillar of support for massive, non-White immigration that will add 100 million non-Whites to the US in the next few decades.
The new elite is definitely not about conserving America for the long term success of the society as a whole. It’s about ethnic paranoia, ancient hatreds, and the desire to completely transform the society at the expense of its traditional people –elite and non-elite alike — at whatever the cost to the society as a whole. Hey, when it falls apart, just take the money and run to Israel.
Sailer makes it pretty clear that Brooks was not connecting the obvious dots: Since Jews took over America, things have definitely changed for the worse for White Americans.
Edmund Connelly (email him) is a freelance writer, academic, and expert on the cinema arts. His most recent TOO article is “Farewell, My Dear WASP“
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I mean: “making things up about them.”
“Brits” – as Russians – do not constitute an ethnic group.”
Huh?
“You said it yourself, British (and Russian) is a cultural and linguistic concept.”
Shared Culture and Linguistics are what makes an Ethnic Group.
“An ethnic group is defined by a concept (often a myth) of common origin.”
Says who?
Even though Russian belongs to the Indo-European family of languages, it has been heavily influenced by non-European (Turkic, Finno-Ugric etc.) languages. I need to know more about the dogging of data to consider your genetic maps. It’s not surprising, for example, if Americans of Russian origin completely overlap with Russians. And, as already mentioned, Russians do not constitute a homogeneous ethnic group. Northern Russians have another ethnic history than southern Russians, and the settlers that ensured the constant territorial expansion throughout the centuries, often took local wives (hence the “cacophony” in Y-chromosomal and mtDNA). Remember that the term “Russian” for centuries meant “Orthodox”. Anyone – regardless of ethnic background – could become Russian through baptism.
“Brits” – as Russians – do not constitute an ethnic group.”
Huh?
Ethnic designations: English, Scottish etc. Cultural/Linguistic/Political designations: British, Russian etc.
Says who?
Anthony D. Smith, among others.
How is this discussion on genetics anything more than a red herring if both populations are isolated and pursuing their own paths of political/economic stratification? If mating standards in one culture are different from that of another, the genetics would follow suit after time. It’s not as though the Sunnis and Shi’ites who are constantly warring are doing so because of any genetic discrepancy. In fact I’d say this materialist obsession with genetics is something uniquely Western. Rarely do I come across Russian academics with as much fetishistic interest in this as the Westerners. Of course I could be wrong on that last point, but I haven’t seen anything to indicate otherwise.
I agree that genetics is not the most important part of this discussion. Population genetics is a science still in its infancy (especially in Russia). I disagree that genetics is a materialist obsession. If anything, it is a geneaological, or “numerical obsession” (some would probably prefer “objectivistic” or “positivistic”) with nature’s codes. As we all know, the materialist train of thought has been very prominent in Russia, and many Russian scientists are heavily involved in this kind of research.
Of course, you could claim that science (or at least the scientific worldview), the concept of race etc., are uniquely Western. But I fail to see that there’s anything uniquely western in materialism. Disenchanted materialism, perhaps, but not materialism itself.
That’s why I specified it as being a certain type of materialism, and I mean the term in the sense that connotes a worldview that posits that all knowledge can be deduced through a rigorous mechanistic process of empiricism and positivistic data accumulation (this, I think, is where I’m not at all similar to other race-conscious people).
It just makes very little sense to me to hear someone say, “Well, theoretically, we should all get along because our genetics are the same.” Just look at Africa, an area so accustomed to be made up of sovereign small bands that they’ll pick virtually any reason for conflict and lack of unity. If genetics fails to be the dividing line between two distinct peoples, it’ll be something else to do it. Linguistic differences, religious differences, greed, etc.
My point is ultimately that genetics has nothing to do with the irreconcilability between Russia and the West. You can even say, “Oh, but both populations have the same IQ scores!” and it doesn’t matter whatsoever, because a man’s values, aesthetics, politics, economics and erotics aren’t determined solely by his IQ. and his inward organic needs are on a plane entirely incommensurable with the whole notion of genetics and IQ and etc.
But seeing this discussion has actually given me a thought: perhaps it is the genetic analyses from folks like JP Rushton, Richard Lynn, et al that mislead people into thinking that white Russians and the rest of Europe are cut from the same cloth? I’ll have to think about it some more.
I think your approach is very healthy and 21st-century. The 18th/19th-century mechanistic worldview still lives (as a ghost?) in the minds of many scientists (there are still psychology professors that never really left Wundt’s laboratories).
I agree on the genetics and IQ argument, but the enormous differences in culture between Western Europe and Russia strike me as potentially founded in different evolutionary pre-history (or, as you seem to suggest, just different history).
Sure, the West vs Russia dichotomy can easily be explained by cultural history (see, for example, Orlando Figes’ book “Natasha’s Dance”), completely different family structures etc. But is that the whole story? I don’t know.
Russia has been ruled by Western European elites for centuries (first the Scandinavians in the Kievan period, then the Germans, French etc. in the post-Petrine Petersburg period). But their culture remained an elite phenomenon, and never had any deeper impact on the larger population.
“I need to know more about the dogging of data to consider your genetic maps.”
In a PCA, the individuals tested are closer together if they are more related. If one is depicted on top of the other, it means they are nearly identical in comparison to the average individual tested.
“It’s not surprising, for example, if Americans of Russian origin completely overlap with Russians.”
At 20% of the 556 White Gentile Americans tested overlapped with the Russians tested.
The chances that a sample of 556 White Americans would turn out to be 20% Russian-American is infinitesimal when you consider that Russians are well less than 2% of American Whites.
“And, as already mentioned, Russians do not constitute a homogeneous ethnic group. Northern Russians have another ethnic history than southern Russians…”
Do you have any reason to think the Russians tested in the study were only from the North?
Anyway, even though they didn’t specify whether the Russians came from the North or South, they did analyze 17 members of the Adygei, a group from the Caucasus with origins to the south of even the most southerly Russians.
What they found is that even most of the Adygei overlap with American Whites, with more than 70% of them perfectly overlapping with European-Americans!
So just imagine how much Southern Russians must overlap with White Americans.
I guess the European perspective is a bit different from the American one in this regard. In Europe, it just doesn’t make much sense – even now in the multi-ethnic context of the 21st century – to say that we’re all Whites. People from the Balkans or from Russia are usually easily recognizable in their behavior and appearances, and they tend to be seen as exotic, hot-headed, deeply foreign.
“How is this discussion on genetics anything more than a red herring if both populations are isolated and pursuing their own paths of political/economic stratification? If mating standards in one culture are different from that of another, the genetics would follow suit after time.”
There hasn’t been much genetic divergence in thousands of years.
Anyway, what does the distant future have to do with anything?
My brother could become the father of different Tribe, does something that could happen in the future stop him from being my brother?
“It’s not as though the Sunnis and Shi’ites who are constantly warring are doing so because of any genetic discrepancy.”
How do you know? At least in Iran the Shiites are descended from the Persians, whereas the Sunnis in Iraq are descended mostly from Arab Tribesmen.
So with the Sunnis and Shiites their ancestors going back to the dawn of known time weren’t even speaking languages from the same family.
This might indicate significant racial differences.
After all, the Middle East is not Europe, and probably doesn’t share Europe’s extremely unusual degree of Genetic Uniformity.
“In fact I’d say this materialist obsession with genetics is something uniquely Western. Rarely do I come across Russian academics with as much fetishistic interest in this as the Westerners.”
What exactly do they do all day, sit around Ouija Boards to consort with the Spirit World?
You’re saying they don’t care about this funny old thing called material reality. I find that hard to believe.
“It just makes very little sense to me to hear someone say, ‘Well, theoretically, we should all get along because our genetics are the same.’”
I don’t recall saying that.
My point was that I have a profound genetic stake in the success of the Russian People due to our relatedness.
Obviously there’s been far too many fratricidal conflicts even in Western History, especially in the wicked time called the 20th Century.
Nothing says there couldn’t be more such conflicts, if we aren’t careful.
Thank God Almighty in the Heavens above that John McCain, that Jew controlled piece of shit who wanted to murder as many Whites in Russia as he could, lost the 2008 Presidential Election.
Obama has had an intelligent Russia policy, and as long as we keep having Presidents like him and Russia avoids having leaders like Khrushchev, everything’s going to be fine.
I understand what you are saying Geiseric. Probably to Western Europeans who’ve been civilized for so long a primal and deep feeling people like the Russians would seem strange.
With me as an American though, looking at Russian cultural traits I feel like I’m looking at something familiar, like they remind me of the crazy men who shot their way across a wild Continent, only stopping when they reached the Pacific Ocean.
The problem with “material reality” is that every time someone says, “Oh, this is the secret aspect to material reality that we haven’t gotten before!” they’re typically missing some other factor that easily could belong under “material reality.” That’s what makes materialism so wonderful: it’s a theoretical way of looking at life, and as such, it can’t be wrong. How could it? Of course I’ve seen plenty of Christian fundamentalists make great arguments that the materialists have horribly screwed up on, and they’ve done so in the lens of their Christianity, as irrational and absurd as it might be. They just so happened to hit on the truth whereas the materialists were off doing their own thing and merely arriving at the wrong conclusions. Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud were pretty sure that they had figured out the material realities of money and sex.
If you think everyone wants to know the truth about something or other, then sure, I’ll cautiously agree. But if you think that everyone is going to agree on the same universal truth merely because of its convincing presentation, I’d say you’re kidding yourself.
So, again, we’re back to square one: if you like the Russians and you have whichever reason for it, then fine. I think they’re great, too. And as long as you have an unconditional respect for them that doesn’t depend on their cultural way of life being compatible with yours (and America’s), then I’d say you’re consistent and in good form. Just beware that your pleasant-sounding racial kinship theory just might have to collide with any unpleasant world of facts so many years down the line.